You need to sign this petition to end the 25 year import rule

Our friends at Petrolicous are onto something here.

In mere milliseconds, you can download or view content from all over the world. In fact, the very words you're seeing on your screen may have traveled thousands of miles to get to you. This presents a problem, because with a couple of clicks you can watch video of an E46-chassis BMW M3 CSL's haunting intake noise. But you'll have to wait decades to own a CSL here in the United States.

It used to be that you could go and buy anything you wanted and bring it home. You could import a non-conforming car only once—so the big caveat was "choose wisely."

That personal exemption was repealed in 1988. Now, if you want to import a car that wasn't federalized, the car has to be 25 years old. That's a long time to wait—especially if you're interested in cars that were sold only in places where the climate encourages rust. So great, you can wait half your adult life for a car that'll be destroyed by the time you can have it?

Our friends at Petrolicious have started a petition to change this exemption to 15 years. And you need to sign it.

Why? Because if you go through the trouble of going abroad, buying a car, and putting it on a boat to bring it home, you're not a casual fan. You're doing it because you've found an automobile you want to cherish and celebrate. And fifteen years is long enough. At fifteen years old, the car is still usable transportation. You'll have a couple of years to enjoy it before it you'll have to work hard to preserve it.

Canadians can bring in cars at 15 years old. They've had ten long years of BMW E30 Tourings, Peugeot 205 GTIs, and McLaren F1s. Next year, when we can finally start thinking about 1990s cars, they can start looking at cars from the 2000s. It's time for us to be more like Canada, eh?

Go sign the petition. Because if you're 25 years old now, do you really want to wait until you're 50 to import that Scirocco R? C'mon, that's just too long to wait.

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